How to do this in photoshop?

[ironhideescalade]

Hi guys!

Let me start off by first saying how honored I am to be amongst photoshop pros such as yourselves! I am not new to photoshop by any means, however I have always wanted to know how to do this. This is what I am looking to do





It's a picture of Michael Jackson. What I want to know is how do you get that effect of layered angles. It's like it's separated in segments and they went back and colored the segments. I'm not talking about how to color an image like that, but how to get a photo in that angular scheme. I hope you know what I'm talking about! Thank you very much for any help you can offer me!

 

[iDad]

There my be a process or action to get an image there but I'm not aware of it, other than painstakingly creating separate layers from the original image with the selection of colors you prefer.or if you're good at drawing

 

[Tom Mann]

Like iDad, I don't know of any way in Photoshop to automatically generate the jagged partitioning of the image.

However, I can suggest a way to automate much of the remainder of the process - see the attached screen grab of the layer stack I am suggesting:

1. From a starting image, apply large amounts of noise reduction, surface smoothing and anything else you need to get a very smooth, completely desaturated version of the image. If you don't do this, the boundaries between the colors will be very noisy.

2. Insert an adjustment layer in the stack to posterize that B&W image to a few levels.

3. Insert another adjustment layer in the stack to apply a gradient map to the posterized image. For this demo, I just grabbed the first one that looked reasonable. You should put considerable thought into this step as this will determine the colors you wind up with.

4. Step 3 gives you version of the smoothed image with the colors in bands. However, it might not be as sharp or contrasty as you might like, so you can put a copy of the smoothed B&W image as the top layer of the stack, and set its mode to "overlay" or whatever you like.

Steps 1-4 give you the image you see, ie, sharp demarcations in colors, but they are curved bands, not jagged areas as in the example.

A quick way to get the latter is to draw a jagged geometric selection, and then average the brightness within that area in the smoothed B&W image. When you do this, because of the adjustment layers above it, that entire area will become a single color (as shown in the screen grab). Repeat this carefully until you have the entire image covered geometrically, and you should be able to get the look you want. (I stopped after averaging one small area.)

HTH,

Tom M

 

[raid2506]

In CS6 - Filter> Artistic> Cutout... Then play with the sliders to get the look you want.

It's easy to use the Paint Bucket Tool (G) to change any colours to suit.

Works best on images which have lots of light variation.

 

[Tom Mann]

Great idea, Raid! I always forget about that tool. The only minor caution in using it it is that unless one has a fairly high rez starting image, you can't get the patterns small enough so they look like the image the OP cited. Obviously, that's easy enough to work around.

Here's the sort of look I get when I use it to feed the process I outlined in my previous post (ie, instead of starting with a surface-smoothed version of the image). Obviously, it's trivial to vary the look substantially, just by varying the gradient map, or switch over to the paint bucket approach Raid suggests for coloration.

Tom

 

[Tom Mann]

PS - Obviously, if you start with an image produced by this tool, you don't need the "posterize" step that I had to include in my previous post.

 

[raid2506]

Nice work Tom, a combination of the Cutout effects with your technique gives some mad results!

The hardest thing seems to be keeping it simple, it's so easy to get carried away with this.

I am now playing around with making a couple of different versions from the start image and then overlaying them and cutting bits out where they clash., Will have to see where this leads.

 

[IamSam]

Tom, I think you are actually closer with the first technique you described. The artistic cut out looks nothing like the OP's example. I will have to play around with this effect.

 

[iDad]

can op post original image used?

 

[IamSam]

Ok, here's my take on the technique.

This was a quick demo, I would usually take the time to do it better. The only tools I use was The Polygonal Lasso Tool and the Eyedropper Tool.

I started with the original photo....



I began using the PLT to make shapes on their own layers an filling them with colors....



I placed the layers into groups....



Added a white background below the original image so I could toggle the original image off and on to check progress...


Of course this is not completed, but you get the idea.

 

[iDad]

There my be a process or action to get an image there but I'm not aware of it, other than painstakingly creating separate layers from the original image with the selection of colors you prefer.or if you're good at drawing

yep thats what i said....... .lol

 

[Tom Mann]

Very nice, Sam!

T

 

[SCTRWD]

IMHO, it was created in Illustrator:

Just Live Trace, expand, ungroup, select all, Object->Path->Simplify with Straight Lines checked.

Or Live Trace, Effect->Distort & Transform->Roughen with Corner Points.